


rebel against the cruel world

by kadotoriku



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Canon Era, Canon Universe, Dimension Travel, Escapism, Friendship, Gen, Gender-neutral Reader, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Manga Spoilers, Mental Health Issues, POV Second Person, Reader-Insert
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:42:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29283186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kadotoriku/pseuds/kadotoriku
Summary: Real life is an endless cycle of meaningless work and you find catharsis only when escaping into the fictional world of Attack on Titan. You then wake up in that very world filled with cruelty and blood and generations of people bred in hatred, but also filled with beauty and camaraderie and the characters who’ve brought you so much joy.Armed with a notebook that can manipulate this reality however you please, why would you ever want to leave?(A different, more serious take on the “reader enters fictional world” trope.)
Relationships: Everyone & Everyone
Comments: 5
Kudos: 17





	rebel against the cruel world

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> " _But... I... I never imagined that... dying like that... could be so meaningless. And when I think about it, that's what happens to nearly all of us who die. Why did I ever think that it'd be different for me?_ " — Floch Forster, SNK Chapter 80

The blank Word document glares back at you, its white light illuminating your dark room.

You wish your overdue paper could write itself, that the half-formed thoughts in your mind can manifest themselves onto your laptop with a snap of your fingers. It’s an ungodly hour of the morning and the house is completely silent. The only sounds that can be heard are the hum of your air conditioner and your half-hearted keyboard clacking.

Maybe, you think if you concentrated hard enough, you can hear the beating of your own heart as it rhythmically pumps blood in its eternal purpose to keep you alive.

You run your fingers through your hair, digging your untrimmed nails into your scalp. It produces a biting pain but doesn’t do its intended job to wake you up and force you to concentrate. Your mind’s busy wandering to different places and your interest lies in things that _aren’t_ this research paper.

To your right are food wrappers of snacks you gorged yourself on, desperate for some sort of distraction and stimulation, squished underneath a plate dirtied with sugar and bread crumbs. There are times when you lose yourself to the saccharine allure of indulging in your cravings, only to come out of the trance with nothing but the weight of regret sinking down into the depths of your bottomless stomach.

A long, heavy sigh.

You rub your tired eyes.

Regret.

That’s one of the only constant things in your shitty life. Besides the ever-present loneliness that whirls around your person, you barely feel much else nowadays. You wake up and regret the time you’ve wasted sleeping, you eat and regret the space you’re taking up, you do schoolwork and regret that nothing you come up with is absolutely perfect.

Living life by making choices you know you won’t regret (or you’ll regret the least) is a way of life you wish you could obey. You simply _exist_ as yet another nondescript soul with no special qualities and no important contributions to the larger world. You rationally know there are many things beyond your control and there’s no concrete way to predict how things will turn out, but you genuinely find it the easiest to just place the blame on yourself.

And isn’t _that_ a major flaw of the human person?

Hahah.

Remaining in mediocrity shouldn’t be satisfactory and choosing ways that are the easiest in the present time (but not the most productive nor fruitful in the long run) shouldn’t be the general norm.

But they _are_.

You stretch your aching limbs and fiddle with your ballpoint pen. It’s just so _tedious_ and _boring_ to do tasks you simply don’t give a shit about. The to-do list in your tiny journal is short but they’re only the first steps in finding out just how truly massive your backlog is. You _still_ have modules to browse and worksheets to download.

While you may be creative and logical, while you may be competent in picking apart methodologies and explanations, while you may be capable of producing creative work born from hours of practice, you’re not immune to feelings of anxiety and dread.

It’s so much _easier_ to ignore your problems and indulge in your hobbies and interest.

The future seems so fucking far away and the passing of the date of your birth doesn’t exactly bestow you with pieces of omnipotent knowledge on surviving your impending “adulthood”.

What even is the point anymore?

You save and close the document to do it later, but who knows when _that’ll_ actually be and what are you going to do now? You still have messages from teachers that you haven’t replied to, and groupworks that you haven’t contributed to yet.

There’s too much to do, far too many tasks, too much _noise_ clogging up your ears and filling the gaps of your head with cotton to muffle everything out.

It’s overwhelming to pick a place to start and to do something without any real reward.

Standing up, you set your laptop to sleep mode and flop face-up onto your bed. You take out your phone to refresh your email and your Twitter timeline for new notifications that can give you a temporary rush of joy. You anticipate a new ground-breaking story or some petty drama to read like the morning paper, you yearn for new content to consume, you search for things that can distract you and bring color to your fickle existence.

Nothing new comes up.

...Unsurprisingly.

Before you toss your phone away, you half-heartedly set an alarm for fifteen minutes even though it’s incredibly likely that you won’t even wake up to it. Your days holed up in your room have all just been an endless cycle of waking up, eating, attending (skipping) online classes, doing anything _but_ mandatory homework, regretting not going anything productive, sleeping, then rinsing and repeating.

The real world is ugly. A cruel place, if you will. Although you rationally know that there’s beauty in it, you can’t exactly _see_ nor _feel_ it. You’re floating day by day in an endless void, riding the ravenous waves of expectations placed upon you, playing a free-for-all game where the only rules are the ones set by the richest of the rich.

Why bother working hard at all if it’ll take working yourself to the bone to get any sort of financial stability in this day and age? It’s not like anyone appreciates your hard work.

At least you’re acknowledged whenever you _fail_.

You let your mind wander to your latest obsession and away from stressful thoughts, to the animanga series that grew on you like a parasitic force of nature. Attack on Titan (also known as Shingeki no Kyojin, SNK, and AOT) has given you a cast of characters to care for and a world to build off of. The writing’s not perfect and neither are the people but it’s not like you can’t come up with your own self-indulgent headcanons and fantasies.

It’d be cool to experience flying with the 3DMG, even if you’d probably break all your bones by smashing into a tree. Your comfort characters would be there to laugh at you, and they’d also be badass when they go berserk over one of their friends getting the slightest bit injured. Maybe you can change everything into a new alternate universe where everything’s alright and no one dies. Or make it so that the outside world is nothing but desolate ruins of the old world before the Titans escaped the nonexistent facility in which they were created.

You reach a hand towards the ceiling, your fingers spread and the outline of your palm blending into the darkness of your room.

Tiredness creeps up in the edges of your consciousness. You drop your hand back down, squeeze your eyes shut, and treat yourself to a few escapist scenes. While most are highly unlikely and nothing but straight-up ridiculous, they give you respite from the whirlwind of stress that the real world is far too happy to dump onto you.

*

Oh.

You’re dreaming...?

Interesting. It’s been a while since you’ve dreamt of, well, _anything_. Your sleep (should you actually get some) has quite been shallow recently. None of those wacky experiences or terrifying nightmares. While your rest can last for hours, they pass like seconds to you and you only wake up with reinvigorated exhaustion at having to survive the next day.

Even more intriguing is the fact that you’re lucid, aware that everything is a dream, a figment of your imagination.

You glance up at the blue sky. Aren’t there some tips online on how to tell if you’re in a dream or not? You don’t really remember them but, hey, might as well as play things out how you want to, right?

“Today, we’ll be drilling you in the proper use of the maneuver gear!”

Instructor Keith Shadis glares down all the cadets lined up around him. His bald head is as shiny as ever under the morning sun, but you then feel a pang of sadness when you recall his death in the manga. If this dream lasts long enough, he should get his own happy ending. He deserves as much.

“If any of you dopes are feeling clumsy, pick up your gear right now and go back to the Interior!”

Your eyes wander and take in the beloved characters from the 104th, all paying attentive attention to the drill instructor. Hm. How can you play around here? What exactly does your brain have in store for you?

Only one way to find out.

“Okay, let’s see some action!”

In unison, you all salute. 


End file.
